In response to the death of George Floyd, an African American man murdered by the police on May 25, 2020, and remembering the death of Adama Traoré, a Malian French man who died in custody after being apprehended by the police on July 19, 2016, French President Macron declared during a Minister’s Council that racism and discrimination were a “plague that is a betrayal to the republican universalism” and a “disease that touches all of society.” He also asked his ministers to be “uncompromising on the topic” and to “reinforce action” against racism (Le Monde, June 10, 2020).

This statement may appear somewhat puzzling, since France presents itself as a colorblind society at the macro level. For example, as said earlier, France has eliminated the word race from its Constitution, and as Chapter 3 explains at length, France also forbids the collection of ethnic statistics for the census. Therefore, we might expect a colorblind society to be immune to racism and discrimination since it excludes race from its institutional vocabulary and policies. But President Macron’s statement clearly indicates that racism is in fact very much present in French society.

We need to look at the contradictions between the republican ideal of colorblind equality, which supports and sustains French integration policies, and the actual discrimination as perceived and experienced by French racial minorities in France, as well as their stigmatization as members of racial minority groups. It is important to note that because of the lack of official ethno-racial categorizations, it has been challenging for French social scientists to examine racial discrimination and racism patterns among French racial minorities. In fact, as expressed in the introduction of this book, immigrants and French racial minorities are often used and understood by the media and the larger public as largely synonymous categories when addressing race, racism, and racial groups at the macro and micro levels. This conflation renders the study of discrimination patterns among French racial minorities rather confusing. This confusion also participates in the reproduction of colorblind racism, as the lack of appropriate data collection and measurement prevents social scientists from examining the structuring effect that these discriminatory practices produce and perpetuate.